hyper-reality

[sweetwater]

Hyperreality is used in semiotics and postmodern philosophy to describe an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern cultures. Hyperreality is a means to characterise the way consciousness defines what is actually "real" in a world where a multitude of media can radically shape and filter an original event or experience. Some famous theorists of hyperreality include Jean Baudrillard, Albert Borgmann, Daniel Boorstin, and Umberto Eco.

Most aspects of hyperreality can be thought of as "reality by proxy." For example, a viewer watching pornography begins to live in the non-existent world of the pornography, and even though pornography is not an accurate depiction of sex, for the viewer, the reality of "sex" becomes something non-existent. Some examples are simpler: the McDonald's "M" arches create a world with the promise of endless amounts of identical food, when in "reality" the "M" represents nothing, and the food produced is neither identical nor infinite.[1]

Baudrillard in particular suggests that the world we live in has been replaced by a copy world, where we seek simulated stimuli and nothing more. Baudrillard borrows, from Jorge Luis Borges (who already borrowed from Lewis Carroll), the example of a society whose cartographers create a map so detailed that it covers the very things it was designed to represent. When the empire declines, the map fades into the landscape and there is neither the representation nor the real remaining – just the hyperreal. Baudrillard's idea of hyperreality was heavily influenced by phenomenology, semiotics, and Marshall McLuhan.

[hester_prynne]

I can dig it!
H

[Arcadia]

mmm... I wonder... what´s this? :

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmun ... 02-05.html

[stilltrucking]

It is an online computer game

2011: Obama’s Coup Fails Injects Politics Into Strategy Game

Foes of President Barack Obama and his policies can vent their frustrations by engaging in fictional warfare, thanks to a new online strategy game with a heavy political component.

The satirical game 2011: Obama’s Coup Fails, launched last month by a group of Ron Paul supporters that call themselves The Founders, throws players into combat against the crumbling Marxist forces of Obama’s loyalist Black Tigers, the Islamic fundamentalist Nation of Malsi and The Cong — a group of deposed Democratic congressional leaders.

See also:
Gay Tony’s Timely Jokes Justify Episodic Gaming

Playable on the United States of Earth website, the game mixes strategy, trivia questions and community elements but has no particular ax to grind with Obama, according to Mike Lodispoto, one of the game’s Libertarian founders. In fact, the next United States of Earth game will target President George W. Bush.

“We detest Republicans and Democrats alike,” Lodispoto told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. The site was cooked up by Libertarians, but Lodispoto says United States of Earth employees are both Republicans and Democrats.

“We allow the right and left to come up with [game's] scenarios, the first being the 2011 Obama Coup one made by right-wingers but tempered by us Libertarians,” he said. “This scenario came out first to capitalize on the various anti-constitutional acts of our current president. The Bush scenario comes out next and I’m sure we will be attacked for being anti-Republican then.”



Read More http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/11/ ... z0ehSbPDMA

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/2 ... 31747.html


http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/10/obama-coup